Public wants evidence of disarmament, says Trimble

Public confidence in disarmament must be rebuilt if there is to be a breakthrough in the Northern Ireland peace process, it was…

Public confidence in disarmament must be rebuilt if there is to be a breakthrough in the Northern Ireland peace process, it was claimed today.

Ulster Unionist leader Mr David Trimble insisted the public needed to be given evidence that IRA guns were being destroyed to secure their support for new power-sharing institutions at Stormont.

Negotiations between unionists, republicans and the British and Irish Governments have carried on over the weekend as efforts to find a breakthrough in the stalled peace process continue.

Both Mr Trimble and Sinn Fein leader Mr Gerry Adams have insisted they remain optimistic about the prospect of a deal, but time is short as an emergency meeting of the Ulster Unionist Party's ruling council approaches on Wednesday.

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The Sinn Fein leadership has held face-to-face talks with senior unionists in the last 24 hours, while Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, have also held telephone discussions in an attempt to find a solution to the current problems.

Mr Trimble put on hold a series of choreographed moves designed to bolster the Belfast Agreement on Tuesday.

His justification was the lack of detail from the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) about the IRA disarmament. The information could not be given by IICD head Gen John de Chastelain because the IRA invoked a confidentiality clause in the decommissioning legislation.

Mr Trimble said his party welcomed decommissioning when it first occurred because it believed it would create public confidence in the change it hoped was happening within the republican movement.

"But the simple truth of the matter is that invisible acts don't really weigh very much with the general public and the result of that was that we said very clearly to Mr Adams months ago that there's no point in secret decommissioning," he told the BBC's Breakfast with Frost.

"It has to be done in a way, to quote the IRA statement, `to maximise public confidence' and we told them very clearly months ago and as recently as last week or the week before that if you do it in secret, it's not going to be effective."

PA